United States
![Julia Langbein - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B0BXCRVK6W.jpg)
American Mermaid: A Novel
A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF THE YEAR • A brilliantly funny debut novel that follows a writer lured to Los Angeles to adapt her feminist mermaid novel into a big-budget action film, who believes her heroine has come to life to take revenge for Hollywood's violations.
"Brilliantly sharp, funny, and thought-provoking, the gripping story of a woman trying to find her way in our chaotic world." -Madeline Miller, bestselling author of Circe
Broke English teacher Penelope Schleeman is as surprised as anyone when her feminist novel American Mermaid becomes a best-seller. Lured by the promise of a big payday, she quits teaching and moves to L.A. to turn the novel into an action flick with the help of some studio hacks. But as she's pressured to change her main character from a fierce, androgynous eco-warrior to a teen sex object in a clamshell bra, strange things start to happen. Threats appear in the screenplay; siren calls lure Penelope's co-writers into danger. Is Penelope losing her mind, or has her mermaid come to life, enacting revenge for Hollywood's violations?
American Mermaid follows a young woman braving the casual slights and cruel calculations of a ruthless industry town, where she discovers a beating heart in her own fiction, a mermaid who will fight to move between worlds without giving up her voice. A hilarious story about deep things, American Mermaid asks how far we'll go to protect the parts of ourselves that are not for sale.
"Brilliantly sharp, funny, and thought-provoking, the gripping story of a woman trying to find her way in our chaotic world." -Madeline Miller, bestselling author of Circe
Broke English teacher Penelope Schleeman is as surprised as anyone when her feminist novel American Mermaid becomes a best-seller. Lured by the promise of a big payday, she quits teaching and moves to L.A. to turn the novel into an action flick with the help of some studio hacks. But as she's pressured to change her main character from a fierce, androgynous eco-warrior to a teen sex object in a clamshell bra, strange things start to happen. Threats appear in the screenplay; siren calls lure Penelope's co-writers into danger. Is Penelope losing her mind, or has her mermaid come to life, enacting revenge for Hollywood's violations?
American Mermaid follows a young woman braving the casual slights and cruel calculations of a ruthless industry town, where she discovers a beating heart in her own fiction, a mermaid who will fight to move between worlds without giving up her voice. A hilarious story about deep things, American Mermaid asks how far we'll go to protect the parts of ourselves that are not for sale.
Editorial Reviews
Named a Most Anticipated Book of the Year by LitHub
"Wildly inventive, this book will get you thinking about artistic integrity as it elicits plenty of snarf-yourself laughs."
-Real Simple
"Funny, smart, and irresistible. . . [American Mermaid] is about striving for success, bearing the costs that come with it and finding your voice again – even when you're the one writing the story. I laughed out loud."
-GMA.com
"Clever. . . Langbein has written a sincere novel about art, Hollywood, sexuality, feminism, global warming, the cultural zeitgeist-and managed to do so while entertaining with a modern voice and a light touch of humor."
-Chicago Review of Books
"[A] hilarious novel [about] something serious: a young woman trying to have her voice heard and find her place in a world that seems bent on diminishing her. This story within a story is a shrewd, sardonic look at Hollywood movie making."
-Associated Press
"A funny debut that asks readers to contemplate ambition and the cost of selling out."
-Zibby Mag
"A comedy of wordplay. A superhero adventure. A Hollywood takedown. A hoot and a half. American Mermaid is all of these, and more. So witty and marvelous you won't be able to put it down. So pick it up!"
-Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Less Is Lost
"I was hooked from the first page. American Mermaid is brilliantly sharp, funny, and thought-provoking, the gripping story of a woman trying to find her way in our chaotic world."
-Madeline Miller, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Circe and The Song of Achilles
"American Mermaid is shapeshifting novel composed of wildly div...
"Wildly inventive, this book will get you thinking about artistic integrity as it elicits plenty of snarf-yourself laughs."
-Real Simple
"Funny, smart, and irresistible. . . [American Mermaid] is about striving for success, bearing the costs that come with it and finding your voice again – even when you're the one writing the story. I laughed out loud."
-GMA.com
"Clever. . . Langbein has written a sincere novel about art, Hollywood, sexuality, feminism, global warming, the cultural zeitgeist-and managed to do so while entertaining with a modern voice and a light touch of humor."
-Chicago Review of Books
"[A] hilarious novel [about] something serious: a young woman trying to have her voice heard and find her place in a world that seems bent on diminishing her. This story within a story is a shrewd, sardonic look at Hollywood movie making."
-Associated Press
"A funny debut that asks readers to contemplate ambition and the cost of selling out."
-Zibby Mag
"A comedy of wordplay. A superhero adventure. A Hollywood takedown. A hoot and a half. American Mermaid is all of these, and more. So witty and marvelous you won't be able to put it down. So pick it up!"
-Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Less Is Lost
"I was hooked from the first page. American Mermaid is brilliantly sharp, funny, and thought-provoking, the gripping story of a woman trying to find her way in our chaotic world."
-Madeline Miller, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Circe and The Song of Achilles
"American Mermaid is shapeshifting novel composed of wildly div...
Readers Top Reviews
daschultz
It’s hard to even put this debut novel in a certain genre – it’s a combination of real life, fantasy, family, late life coming-of-age, with some dystopian or fantasy thrown in!! This was a 5* read which just got a little bogged down in parts and veered into the unbelievable realm at times but it’s fiction so I was along for the ride.. This is one of those books that you really would be best off if you went into blind! That said, I will briefly tell you that it’s a story of a high school teacher, Penelope, who leads a pretty quiet life in Connecticut. She loves her job but is tired of trying to make ends meet on her salary. There are some personal things that she needs to do that will require lots of money, which she doesn’t have Shs has a book which she has been working on and finally submitted it – it’s published! She was shocked and happy!! She doesn’t know what to expect. The story she has written is about a mermaid, Sylvia, made human by scientists who found her. The book covers her from when she is found as a baby to her as an adult. Sylvia is a strong woman who decides what she must do to be happy. When the novel is published she is shocked that it does so well, in fact it goes viral Enter big Hollywood and an agent who talks Penelope into coming to Hollywood. She sells the rights to her book and works with two screenwriters on the project. She has entered a world that is profoundly foreign to her! No one is who they promise to be! When the screenwriters start to turn her warrior mermaid/human into a sexy teenager, Penelope pushes back. However since she sold the rights she can easily be pushed out of the picture. This is truly one of the most unique books I have read this year. This would have been a 5 if not for some choppy changes from the present time to the book – the evil plot that transpires is also mind boggling and you have to believe that someone could be so very evil. I can highly recommend this novel which teeters between a 4 and a 5. I can promise you this is like no other mermaid book you have ever read and it is a highly entertaining read. I received an ARC of this novel from the publisher through NetGalley. It was my pleasure to read and review this title. All opinions are my own.
TBS
High school English teacher Penny Schleeman is on the brink of penury when her fantastical novel about Sylvia, a repressed powerful mermaid, hugely takes off due to the twin powers of social media and influencer culture. This happens when her book randomly pops up on the nightstand of an Instagram celebrity. Soon afterward, Penny is swept into LA, into a book to movie deal where she is paired with a seasoned writing dude duo, and into a business relationship with Danielle, a callous, zealous film agent. Danielle, encourages Penny to lead a “boss bitch” life comprised of showing up at the right parties, wearing the right clothes, terrorizing wait staff, and “paying people to pay people.” And as Penny dutifully follows this advice, the venal screenwriting bros take an ax and auger to her novel and go after the body, soul and heart of Sylvia, turning her from a feminist water warrior into a sexy doomed teenage Disney caricature that must die, because it plays better than targeting men and trying to restore ecological balance. Langbein cleverly alternates sections between Penny’s life and Penny’s novel, also titled American Mermaid, Sylvia’s origin story. Wheelchair-bound Sylvia, adored by her mother and controlled by her brilliant mega-wealthy inventor father and her physician, has no idea she is a mermaid, so her discoveries of all the flavors of betrayal do not end well…for some. Sylvia’s story is also what propels Penny’s transit through the LA round of industry gatherings, events, promotions, and pitiless editing by her co-writers. For the most part, the writing is compelling in both narratives. What bubbles to the surface is the tension between Penny’s authorial frustration in trying to preserve the integrity of Sylvia with Penny’s growing complacency as she plumbs the vacuous surfaces of Hollywood parties and players (including her guilty pleasure at finally being able to afford the expensive brand of shampoo). But something strange is happening to the script and to those that would script it. As the rewrites begin to take on a life of their own or perhaps of Sylvia’s, Penny’s life seems to be echoing parts of her book, going beyond ocean injuries and father issues. The convergence of these two stories is complex, and is complicated by a wall behind the fourth wall; the scathing critique of the novel “American Mermaid” by a private school teenager at a bookstore reading. And the structural twist, when this teenager gets absorbed into the narrative of Penny’s experience, cunningly defies every expectation of where the story will lead. But although the combined weight, twisted POVs, and unanswered questions of these narratives eventually overpowers the conclusion (or conclusions), there is much to be appreciated here. Langbein excels at acid rain scrutiny of the patois and casual cruelty of the elite and entitled and especially of...
Short Excerpt Teaser
Chapter 1
The novel that I wrote begins with a woman in a wheelchair falling into the sea.
It's not a comedy. I wrote it alone in a studio apartment in New Haven, Connecticut, at a table on a rug that looked like it had been digested rather than woven. For three years I came home from teaching English to teenagers at Holy Cross, a secular public high school on Holy Cross Avenue, and wrote in an exhausted, anxious daze. I remember the night I started. I had bought a bottle of terrible wine after work. I was writing in my diary, then I was lying to my diary, then I wrote her. I saw her, I felt her: she was not a broken woman but a mermaid after all. Her fear of drowning filled me, and then, buoyed up in drunkenness, I felt my legs twitch with a long-forgotten muscle memory of swimming.
I lie on the giant white raft of my super-king bed, twenty stories up in an executive apartment that I've rented for the summer in Los Angeles. I wasn't pretending to be an executive, and I'm embarrassed at being the wrong person for it. I have nothing but spare time here, as the time-efficient pod-coffee reminds me. I have nothing to scan on the scanner. This place was cheap because it's in Century City, the uncoolest part of LA. You can see my building with others of its kind: architecturally, they are big-boned admin women in gray pantsuits. Unless I've undergone some kind of retinal bleaching in the California sunshine, I think the wall-size windows are made of sunglasses glass, the pervert kind that dim. I feel like a pervert, that mix of irresponsible pleasure and occasional shrugging disgust. Pleasure because I left my teaching job and I have my days free, disgust because of what I'm out here to do. Sometimes I push my nose against the glass wall and look down from my death-defying diving board at the unwalked pavement below, the only part of LA that could just as easily be Stamford, Connecticut. If it weren't for the chilly stream of panic in my blood that runs on a loop like a corporate courtyard fountain, I'd forget where I was.
American Mermaid was published in December. I was a nobody--no babbling spectral internet persona, just a teacher--and I was told that I was lucky to get an advance of forty-five thousand. It seemed monumental, that sum, and I was grateful for the seventeen grand I pocketed after my agent nibbled and taxes chomped at it. Ten grand paid off my credit card debt. But even having seven thousand extra bucks was thrilling. Unallotted dollars not clothing me or housing me or drunk down inescapably on Friday at a bar three blocks from school.
I was thirty-three and even with my extra money my legs were hairy and my workplace was dirty and it was fine. Then suddenly it seemed the whole world might melt and recool in a smooth new shape.
In the spring, just a few months into the book's publication, American Mermaid appeared on the Instagram account of a professional internet presence named Stem Hollander, an athletic charmer in his midforties with floppy blond hair and ten cheeky grins, whose humpy Segway salsa dancing gets millions of likes between endorsements of fair-trade avocados and weed-lobby Democrats. After Hollander, the librarians picked it up. Then, to my surprise, some national treasure on the Today show open-throat screamed about it too early in the morning. Thanks to her it was packed up and palleted to Costco, where I've seen it myself on a chessboard of hardbacks, a rook's jump away from Dieting for Joint Health. I did a gimmicky magazine interview where I met a male journalist my age in a leather jacket in Atlantic City at a bar with live mermaid shows. Women with big naturals, their legs bound in plastic tail fins, pretended not to need to breathe, writhing on the other side of a scratched pane while we drank rum runners as if the Garden State Parkway weren't five miles away. I cried and the journalist described it, which I think got me foreign sales in thirty-six countries.
But Stem Hollander got it all started. He Instagrammed a picture of American Mermaid on his reclaimed marble nightstand. It was sandwiched between Balderdash, a book your uncle definitely read, about a Great Dane in the British Army who changed the course of World War II, and Shots Shots Shots, a memoir by a twenty-four-year-old fashion model that's been taken as a polemic against recovery. I remember thinking, proud and bewildered, I wonder if this is what it's like to see your kid walk at graduation, in the lineup between a jock and a twat. I know her so well, but who is my daughter in the world?
She could be a movie star, they told me: immediately after Hollander's endorsement in April, the film agents came calling. American Mermaid was an action film waiting to happen. With your gift for f...
The novel that I wrote begins with a woman in a wheelchair falling into the sea.
It's not a comedy. I wrote it alone in a studio apartment in New Haven, Connecticut, at a table on a rug that looked like it had been digested rather than woven. For three years I came home from teaching English to teenagers at Holy Cross, a secular public high school on Holy Cross Avenue, and wrote in an exhausted, anxious daze. I remember the night I started. I had bought a bottle of terrible wine after work. I was writing in my diary, then I was lying to my diary, then I wrote her. I saw her, I felt her: she was not a broken woman but a mermaid after all. Her fear of drowning filled me, and then, buoyed up in drunkenness, I felt my legs twitch with a long-forgotten muscle memory of swimming.
I lie on the giant white raft of my super-king bed, twenty stories up in an executive apartment that I've rented for the summer in Los Angeles. I wasn't pretending to be an executive, and I'm embarrassed at being the wrong person for it. I have nothing but spare time here, as the time-efficient pod-coffee reminds me. I have nothing to scan on the scanner. This place was cheap because it's in Century City, the uncoolest part of LA. You can see my building with others of its kind: architecturally, they are big-boned admin women in gray pantsuits. Unless I've undergone some kind of retinal bleaching in the California sunshine, I think the wall-size windows are made of sunglasses glass, the pervert kind that dim. I feel like a pervert, that mix of irresponsible pleasure and occasional shrugging disgust. Pleasure because I left my teaching job and I have my days free, disgust because of what I'm out here to do. Sometimes I push my nose against the glass wall and look down from my death-defying diving board at the unwalked pavement below, the only part of LA that could just as easily be Stamford, Connecticut. If it weren't for the chilly stream of panic in my blood that runs on a loop like a corporate courtyard fountain, I'd forget where I was.
American Mermaid was published in December. I was a nobody--no babbling spectral internet persona, just a teacher--and I was told that I was lucky to get an advance of forty-five thousand. It seemed monumental, that sum, and I was grateful for the seventeen grand I pocketed after my agent nibbled and taxes chomped at it. Ten grand paid off my credit card debt. But even having seven thousand extra bucks was thrilling. Unallotted dollars not clothing me or housing me or drunk down inescapably on Friday at a bar three blocks from school.
I was thirty-three and even with my extra money my legs were hairy and my workplace was dirty and it was fine. Then suddenly it seemed the whole world might melt and recool in a smooth new shape.
In the spring, just a few months into the book's publication, American Mermaid appeared on the Instagram account of a professional internet presence named Stem Hollander, an athletic charmer in his midforties with floppy blond hair and ten cheeky grins, whose humpy Segway salsa dancing gets millions of likes between endorsements of fair-trade avocados and weed-lobby Democrats. After Hollander, the librarians picked it up. Then, to my surprise, some national treasure on the Today show open-throat screamed about it too early in the morning. Thanks to her it was packed up and palleted to Costco, where I've seen it myself on a chessboard of hardbacks, a rook's jump away from Dieting for Joint Health. I did a gimmicky magazine interview where I met a male journalist my age in a leather jacket in Atlantic City at a bar with live mermaid shows. Women with big naturals, their legs bound in plastic tail fins, pretended not to need to breathe, writhing on the other side of a scratched pane while we drank rum runners as if the Garden State Parkway weren't five miles away. I cried and the journalist described it, which I think got me foreign sales in thirty-six countries.
But Stem Hollander got it all started. He Instagrammed a picture of American Mermaid on his reclaimed marble nightstand. It was sandwiched between Balderdash, a book your uncle definitely read, about a Great Dane in the British Army who changed the course of World War II, and Shots Shots Shots, a memoir by a twenty-four-year-old fashion model that's been taken as a polemic against recovery. I remember thinking, proud and bewildered, I wonder if this is what it's like to see your kid walk at graduation, in the lineup between a jock and a twat. I know her so well, but who is my daughter in the world?
She could be a movie star, they told me: immediately after Hollander's endorsement in April, the film agents came calling. American Mermaid was an action film waiting to happen. With your gift for f...
